This reporting formula is what the American news industry calls “true and unbiased news.” It is regarded as something holy. A more than religious fervor marks the industry’s references to it. Kent Cooper, executive director of A.P., admits that it was not “the result of philosophic study or prayer,” but he is proud that A.P. puts “into forceful and lasting effect the moral concept that necessity had invented.” He further calls it the “greatest moral concept ever developed in America and given to the world.” A second’s thought is enough to reveal that there is nothing “moral” about the concept at all. The successful agency formula does not require “truth.” It requires only the transmission of views or “facts” acceptable and useful to _all capitalist newspaper owners_. It does not eliminate bias. _It merely eliminates differences between individual publishers and reduces reporting to the common bias of owners as a group._ This formula for standardized treatment of events and opinions is completely devoid of moral content. It has melted all varieties of information, all events and interrelations, down to one kind of easily sold and exchanged piece of goods: the commodity, news. Though United Press is today as pompous as A.P. about the supposed “objectivity” of American agency “news,” Roy Howard was franker when he was fighting an uphill battle for U.P.’s life. He then complained bitterly of A.P.’s monopolistic practices in “collecting and selling a basic journalistic commodity--news--in a highly competitive field.” He also said: “I do not subscribe to the general idea that news and opinion are two different and easily separated elements.” Consider news about Negroes, for instance, as handled by the agencies. Most of it emanates from Southern newspapers with avowed lily-white views; it is for distribution to all subscribers but must not “offend” the large bloc of Southern papers. So it is all bias and a continent wide. Oddly enough, labor journalism had to solve the same problem that led the capitalist agencies to their news formula. The American Federation of Labor established Federated Press in 1919 to serve the labor press, chiefly weekly and monthly membership journals. The labor movement was and is rent by factions; jurisdictional feuds are topped by the present division of labor into the A. F. of L. and C.I.O. camps. Yet Federated Press has always been able to supply news acceptable to warring factions and rival unions. The agency never pretended, however, that it was non-partisan in a larger sense. F.P. Chief Carl Haessler said: The management of the Federated Press has never subscribed to the hypocritical assertion of the capitalist newspapers that news can be without bias. The Federated Press is very careful about facts but they are presented with a decidedly pro-labor interpretation just as we believe the capitalist press interprets news so that it becomes pro-capitalist. Remote Control